The Shtizu Fuzz

The fuzz pedal has been around for a long time. It has come and gone and come again in popularity. Sometimes you just get it until you get it.  But once you get it, it's magical.

I have been building my own pedals for 10 years.  I took all the readily available information from the interwebz and built the Shitzu fuzz.  It's small, hairy, and loud.

Essentially it's a Fuzz Face circuit with a few tweaks.  The first transistor is a lower gain transistor and the second is higher gain. Also, it has a potentiometer on the power supply so you can reduce the voltage starving it and creating those great sputtery fuzz sounds. It also has a poteniometer on the input

to reduce the signal to the first transistor to tailor the amount of signal hitting the first gain stage.  Lastly, I just omitted the fuzz control since I like it dimed anyways.  The volume control on your guitar or the control to limit the signal on the first gain stage more than give you enough control over the amount of fuzz

It's a simple build and a great sounding and versatile pedal.  Check out this demo below.

Fuzz, I just never got it, until I got it.

The below post is a re-post from one of my old blogs, enjoy.

Fuzz pedals have been around for more than 40 years now. They were the first attempt to get the sound of a cranked amplifier without having to crank the amplifier. They were/are crude, and dare I say, sometimes not very pleasant sounding. Now if you were a guitar player in the late 60's, this was all you had at your disposal. Technology has advanced, amplifiers are capable of ridiculous gain at moderate volumes, and there are a million other distortion devices. So why does the fuzz pedal still prevail.

I came up in the era of the shred guitarist. Van Halen, Randy Rhoades, Ygwie Malmsteen. The requirements for this type of playing was a high gain yet articulate and clear sound to allow all the fast picked notes to be heard. There was no room for the woolly, unpredictable sound of a fuzz pedal so I just never gave them much thought. They were yesterdays technology.

Fast forward 20 years. Shred is less prevalent. Grunge hit us all in the face. And the wall of sound was being driven by fuzz pedals. All of a sudden, the Big Muff, Fuzz Face, Tone Bender etc... were all over the place. I couldn't believe it. Why were these guys using old technology? Of course grunge has since passed but the fuzz pedal is still here. Holy crap.

I finally decided to look into this a little. As I was learning to build my own stompboxes I decided that I needed to dive head first into a fuzz pedal. I build a fuzz face variant. After i got it working, I plugged in and let it rip. What an experience (no pun intended). I realized that while crude and somewhat odd sounding at times, the overtones and singing qualities of the pedal made me take notice.

 There is a great range of sounds in a good fuzz pedal. Rolling back the volume yields a sweet overdrive with a hint of grit. Running it full out gets you a tone reminiscent of hell on a bad day. I finally got it.

If you have wondered about what all the fuss about fuzz is, go to your local music store and check one out. You may be surprised.

Scott

Russian Big Muff

I have a friend who had a Big Muff pedal that was intermittently cutting out. Knowing that I'm a tinkerer and build pedals I was asked if I could look at it. Of course my response was yes.

Since I don't own one of these glorious distortion devices I though tit would be a great opportunity to play around with this "Made In Russia" monster of sonic madness.


I initially thought it might be a faulty switch.  Once I opened it up and tested it with the circuit board exposed I came to the conclusion that the switch was fine but there was a loose connection somewhere.

Since EH uses a ribbon wire that is split off to the various connections on the pots, switches, and circuit board I basically started re-soldering all the connections on the pedal.

Fortunately, after I did the switch the tone control and the volume control the pedal came back to life and the sound was loud and proud with no cutting out.














Check out the demo of the revived and revitalized pedal.

Plutonium Fuzz….Meltdown in a box

Fuzz pedals have been around for over forty years now. They were among the first pedals us guitarists had to use to create the distorted rock and roll sound we all love. A few years ago while learning the ropes of pedal building I built the Plutonium Fuzz. It was based on Fuzz Central's Axis Face which was a Fuzz Face variant. I did some tweaks based on information found on the various DIY sites and ended up with a really cool pedal.

I've had the schematic and perf board layout on the DIY stompboxes forum for a while but I think it's time I put it here for everyone to see.


The Schematic

The Layout



The Lowdown

This Fuzz is not subtle. It is not completely out of control either. It has lots of gain but with careful tweaking of the controls you can get a great maxed out fuzz sound while still maintaining some clarity and minimizing noise.

When building this there are a few things to be careful of. Make sure your input and output wires are as short as possible. Also don't let the input and outputs cross. Nor should you let any signal carrying wires cross the power supply wires.

 Fuzz circuits are a magnet for noise and you will be faced with some ugly hum, his and oscillation if your are not careful.

Here’s a link to a video demo from my old guitar blog days…..yes I probably talked too much
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDbTzIldEY4

Halloween fun

It’s that time of year again.  All the ghouls and goblins come out of hiding to scare all us mortal beings.  As a kid, we all had that fear of the dark, or the monster in your closet.

A few years back I employed my wife and my son to help me record a family Halloween song. It was a great experience and it captured my son at an awesome period in his childhood.  That age where you live for Halloween and Christmas.  My wife is also immortalized as the calming reassuring voice of mom, the person who makes everything OK.


“Monster in my Closet” is a fun, slightly scary, retro Halloween song for all ages.

Enjoy